When did feminism go completely crazy?

[warpus]

However, having said that, I think anyone should be allowed to criticise anyone else for whatever reason they deem fit so I don't have a problem with "man bashing" in and of itself. Just be prepare for plenty of men to tell you to sod off and to judge you rather harshly in response to it

Well, hopefully not just men. Hopefully if there's racism or sexism, people will speak out against it even if they aren't being targeted by it.

 

[Narz]

To say a man has 'an advantage' you have to define advantage & how its used.

In prison sentencing a woman will have an advantage, same thing in family court (pretty much any situation involving police or courts, you don't often hearing about police shooting women). In a fist fight a man will (have an edge). In the workplace things have evened out.

As children, boys tend to get blamed more & their "misbehavior" tends to be blown out of proportion. I likely would not have been drugged up as a 7-year old had I been female (I'm too lazy to look up the stats on Ritalin & ADHD but I suspect it was very heavily focused on boys). Even as babies females are given more affection. IIRC they've studied this in the labatory, giving adults random babies & telling the adult to hold it & noticed that if they said it was female they would cuddle it longer & soothe it more.

Girls seem to have to deal with more sexual abuse which is a real tragedy. Of course, the rate of male sexual abuse may be lower cause what man wants to admit some stranger touched his cock as a child. Girls are also taught by society to become obsessed with appearance which is extremely harmful. I think this has definitely gotten better since the 80's and 90's.

Probably overall a man will have a slight advantage. Probably equivalent to a couple inches of height. Though personally if I had to come back next lifetime as a short man or as a woman I'd choose a woman (not that I believe in reincarnation).

 

[Senethro]

Specific examples don't invalidate trends.

Probably overall a man will have a slight advantage.

Its like people haven't heard of a wage gap.

 

[Narz]

http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm

Rather than patronizingly assuming women all want to be world leaders one might instead realize that not every woman wants to be Hillary Clinton.

A poll on the street might be interesting. Ask a few thousand adult men & women if they'd want the power & responsibility of being president. I imagine the #'s would correlate with the actual numbers.

Anyway, if one of the Republicans beats Hillary this year I'll be shocked.

 

[NovaKart]

Oh another thing about that list, the USA is listed below Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan in the number of female representatives. Somehow, having more women in congress/parliament doesn't seem to make much of a difference.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

While the information is interesting it's really not very relevant to our discussion unless you believe that men in politics use their position to create an advantage for their gender. As we see from the mostly middle aged women who judge women for their clothing choices when they are raped, being of the same gender does not mean that an individual will favor his/her gender and is incapable of having sexist judgements of their own gender.

We also see from this forum that many men are supportive of feminist causes. It doesn't matter if one is a man or a woman. Women can be misogynist and women in politics, say Sarah Pailin for example, can be against progressive women's issues. Men can be the opposite.

If you're in politics, it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman. What matters is whether or not you support gender equality.

I think the point wasn't that the men will have inherently male-favouring politics (although that may well be part of it as well), but rather that there should be essentially a 50-50 mix of men and women in politics in the first place.

Of course, this viewpoint depends entirely on the assumption that gender is a social construct and that the natural state of things would be to have exactly equal numbers of men and women interested and engaged in every aspect of all human activity (such as refuse collection and working on sewage farms for example). If you don't assume this then it suddenly stops being a problem if more men than women go into politics. Or sewage.

Of course, if women were actually being prevented from entering politics that would be a concern, but the fact that they tend to make up a not insignificant minority in most western democracies including leading major parties and even countries in some cases) would seem to indicate that this isn't the case. They clearly can (and do) make it into the highest levels of political office, so the patriarchy isn't really doing much of a good job of keeping them in their place.

 

[warpus]

Its like people haven't heard of a wage gap.

The gender wage gap in the U.S. is almost gone.

The AAUW (editor's note: American Association of University Women) has now joined ranks with serious economists who find that when you control for relevant differences between men and women (occupations, college majors, length of time in workplace) the wage gap narrows to the point of vanishing.

Not that I don't think that generally men have it better in North America, but there's no need to perpetuate myths to make that point.

 

[Senethro]

Oh another thing about that list, the USA is listed below Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan in the number of female representatives. Somehow, having more women in congress/parliament doesn't seem to make much of a difference.

So what? Interpret it. Ignore failed states, monarchies and totalitarian hellholes.

Specific examples don't invalidate trends.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

You find this confusing? Speaking out against an entire gender is sexist, and generally not viewed as a civilized opinion for one to hold.

I don't find speaking out against men sexist in a patriarchal society, not really. Are women supposed to preface general critiques with specific numbers if they're critiquing rape culture or street harassment? That seems a bit ridiculous. Again, I think the thing is... these are general complaints, about men, in a male-dominated society. I don't expect that I or any other man should go unscathed, nor do I take something personally as long as I feel I am not contributing to it.

 

[Narz]

Specific examples don't invalidate trends.

When you keep having to copy/paste that expression over & over perhaps you should question the validity of your trend & what it actually means.

 

[NovaKart]

Specific examples don't invalidate trends.



Its like people haven't heard of a wage gap.

Oh we've heard of the wage gap but it's an endless debate about whether it really exists, how significant it is, how relevant the wage gap is among young people and how much of it applies to older people from a time when many professions were more male dominated and how much of it comes down to personal choices. We might also mention how more women are getting college degrees and masters degrees than men and wonder why that is.

 

[Senethro]

The gender wage gap in the U.S. is almost gone.

From the article:

It does not account for differences in occupations, positions, education, job tenure or hours worked per week. When such relevant factors are considered, the wage gap narrows to the point of vanishing.

lol

 

[Senethro]

When you keep having to copy/paste that expression over & over perhaps you should question the validity of your trend & what it actually means.

I keep having to post it repeatedly because you're doing the equivalent of saying its cold outside today so global warming isn't real.

 

[NovaKart]

I think the point wasn't that the men will have inherently male-favouring politics (although that may well be part of it as well), but rather that there should be essentially a 50-50 mix of men and women in politics in the first place.

Of course, this viewpoint depends entirely on the assumption that gender is a social construct and that the natural state of things would be to have exactly equal numbers of men and women interested and engaged in every aspect of all human activity (such as refuse collection and working on sewage farms for example). If you don't assume this then it suddenly stops being a problem if more men than women go into politics. Or sewage.

Of course, if women were actually being prevented from entering politics that would be a concern, but the fact that they tend to make up a not insignificant minority in most western democracies including leading major parties and even countries in some cases) would seem to indicate that this isn't the case. They clearly can (and do) make it into the highest levels of political office, so the patriarchy isn't really doing much of a good job of keeping them in their place.

Yes I think gender is not a social construct. There are many people who don't fit into traditional gender roles and I strongly support that we should not be restricted by them. At the same time, when we don't see many women choosing traditionally male careers, even when they are encouraged to do so, we might want to consider reasons for this besides sexism.

So what? Interpret it. Ignore failed states, monarchies and totalitarian hellholes.

Specific examples don't invalidate trends.

That's 5 countries and more than enough of an example to show that more women in politics does not necessarily relate to a more woman friendly approach.

 

[Narz]

Are women supposed to preface general critiques with specific numbers if they're critiquing rape culture or street harassment?

The problem with rape & harassment is they are hard to measure because they are under-reported.

Tacking "culture" on the end of rape makes it seem like the culture specifically endorses rape. I agree prison sentences for rape are too low (maybe once pot because totally legal we can clear out some prison space for them). Personally I think rapists should be chemically castrated. You violate someone's sexuality, you lose the right to yours.

Rape is a horrible crime, I feel like saying "rape-culture" softens it, dilutes it over the culture instead of blaming rapists its now "society's fault", thats BS, its the fault of individual scumbags & they should be prosecuted more heavily. You're not helping a victim by making her afraid of her whole society. Help her by cracking down & punishing would-be abusers, making them scared to act or maybe even offer them counseling or have an anonymous hotline they can call before they commit crimes (legalizing prostitution wouldn't hurt either).

 

[Wolfbeckett]

From the article:



lol

Wow. What an insightful rebuffing. Never have I seen such mastery of the facts. Truly, you have opened my eyes to the possibility that the wage gap is real. Future historians will look back on this moment and say that the root event that truly began the process of ending gender discrimination was when Senethro uttered this word of wisdom: "lol".

 

[NovaKart]

Wow. What an insightful rebuffing. Never have I seen such mastery of the facts. Truly, you have opened my eyes to the possibility that the wage gap is real. Future historians will look back on this moment and say that the root event that truly began the process of ending gender discrimination was when Senethro uttered this word of wisdom: "lol".

Yeah I saw that and started typing a response and then I thought, hmm, what can I say really? Speaks for itself.

 

[Narz]

I keep having to post it repeatedly because you're doing the equivalent of saying its cold outside today so global warming isn't real.

Your analogies are awful, maybe you should stick to posting links.

You're posting random statistics that could be interpreted dozens of ways & insisting yours is the truth.

Why aren't there more female MMA fighters? Is it sexism? Or maybe women are smart enough not to want to get their heads bashed in for our amusement. Who are you to force women into politics?

 

[Senethro]

If you guys can read that ridiculous caveat about what they need to do to make the numbers line up without lolling then idk what to say!

It really speaks for itself.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

Yeah I saw that and started typing a response and then I thought, hmm, what can I say really? Speaks for itself.

I'm not surprised though, every time a discussion about social issues like these come up on this forum you get people who think they can win the argument by laughing and ridiculing their detractors enough, as if that somehow inherently invalidates logic and facts.